They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.
Lorrie MooreRead
She was not good on the phone. She needed the face, the pattern of eyes, nose, trembling mouth... People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of face-to-face communication over phone conversations, highlighting the nuances of human interaction.
Lorrie Moore's quote reflects on the inadequacy of phone communication, illustrating how important visual cues and expressions are in understanding emotions and intentions. The metaphor of watching words leave like passengers at an airport conveys the sense of loss and disconnection that arises without the presence of a physical connection, suggesting that true communication involves not just words, but the shared experience of presence.
Themes
CommunicationRelationshipsHuman InteractionPresenceEmpathy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of personal connections, this quote can illustrate why face-to-face communication is vital.
More from Lorrie Moore
All quotes →You couldn't pretend you had lost nothing... you had to begin there, not let your blood freeze over. If your heart turned away at this, it would turn away at something greater, then more and more until your heart stayed averted, immobile, your imagination redistributed away from the world and back only toward the bad maps of yourself, the sour pools of your own pulse, your own tiny, mean, and pointless wants.
Lorrie MooreRead
I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.
Lorrie MooreRead
No matter that you anticipate a thing; you get so used to it as part of the future that its actuality, its arrival, its force and presence, startles you, takes you by surprise, as would a ghost suddenly appearing in the room wearing familiar perfume and boots.
Lorrie MooreRead
When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'
Lorrie MooreRead
She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.
Lorrie MooreRead
Similar quotes
More non-fringe, non-radical homosexuals emerge into public view every day. As the stereotype of the homosexual as antisocial deviant crumbles, a (political) party or faction that tolerates gay-baiting rhetoric in the name of 'family values' makes 'family values' look more and more like common bigotry.
Jonathan RauchRead
I try to open up my heart as much as I can and keep a real keen eye out that I don't get sentimental. I think we're all afraid to reveal our hearts. It's not at all in fashion.
Paul SimonRead
No one ever saw all of him. It took me nearly four decades to allow my father his shadows, his reserve, to sit silently with him and not clamor for something more.
Patti DavisRead
Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, lives, and behaviors of others. They react to their own problems, pains, and behaviors.
Melody BeattieRead
What a man is is an arrow into the future, and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.
Sylvia PlathRead
You're not free if you can't marry the person you love because a county clerk is imposing his or her interpretation of religion on you.
Pete ButtigiegRead